I was terrified when I first learned of Medusa.
I was terrified when I first learned of Medusa. The myth of the snake-headed monster scared me enough to avoid her real story. I was taught to fear the hiss, and the cold eyes that turned men to stone. It is easy enough to feed off the fear, but deep down, I knew I wanted to excavate the truth. The stone-cold floor of the temple. Her sanctity violated by the god of the sea, because gods never learned how to take “no” for an answer. The silence of a deity was louder than her scream for help. Whose name do you cry, when the very goddess you worshiped turns her back and fails to protect? The silk hair that turned into thousands of snakes were not her enemies, but sentinels. A crown of hissing truth that petrified the men who came to hunt her down. They say villains aren’t born, they are carved by the hands of those around you. Men were vengeful enough to behead a victim just to obliterate their own kind.
The muted mercy of a goddess gave birth to patriarchy. They needed a monster, so the gods could keep their names clean. Labelling medusa as a monster was easier to validate the action of those who wanted to benefit off of the entity. And I would like to clarify that the entity is, unequivocally, men. Cause it is very humane to want to justify their own acts, regardless of how vile their actions can be. The root of demonizing women is dated back much earlier than we think. It is painfully ironic that female figures are often mistaken as a fragile and vulnerable being where expressing emotions like anger, hunger and ambition are considered as monstrosity.
Medusa’s traditional story is a classic case of victim blaming, where a survivor of assault is punished for the vile act that was committed against her. Her story raises few concerns and questions in my chaotic mind. Our body is a vessel of our soul. Even though they exist in separate forms, body and souls are intertwined and linked like twins growing inside a mother’s womb. Therefore, when a body is violated, the disgusts, the resistance, the anger, the protest, the pain run deep into our blood and reach to our soul, cuts through it and linger there. The myth of Medusa is a mirror to this human nature.
Isn’t it horrible enough that a fellow human being is capable of causing so much destruction and annihilation to another human being, that living through each day can feel like a thousand deaths you have to conquer just to survive. And when your soul is a wreck cause of all the damages that have been done to it, your own body becomes an unfamiliar refuge.
But when we dig a little deeper, a radical rebellion emerges shifting our perspective, illustrating that Athena might not be the villain of this myth, but a savior. What if Athena chose to display her mercy and favors in a way the patriarchal eye could not immediately comprehend? What if Athena turned medusa into a monster so that no men or male god could survive her powerful gaze or never be able to harm her again!
This tactical intervention directly dismantles what film theorist Laura Mulvey famously coined the “male gaze”. The term “male gaze” depicts men as active observers (those who hold power and control the narratives) and women as passive objects (who are meant to be consumed and to be looked at as desirable objects). Athena flipped the script by giving medusa the gaze that turned men into stone which is an act of self-defense against patriarchy. In a world where women are expected to be silent and docile, medusa symbolizes power so strong that makes you pause before you think of messing with the figure. Goddess Athena turned medusa into a completely different entity where the snakes in her head were not enemies but her savior, her sentinels. That is what I call protection. Like a shelter that tends to protect you from feasible harm, Athena saved her like a patron. Just as a mother who would do anything to protect her child, Athena turned the curse into a “gift of armor”.
Men who like to address themselves as so called protectors, patriarchy is a system designed to validate their own conquests. A society that loves to feed off of the fear and insecurities of women, being able to express raw emotions like anger, frustration and rejecting the superficial beauty standards is an act of rebellion. The monstrosity itself is the real illusion of the narrative. Medusa, is not lethal as the story portrayed her to be. Instead, as the philosopher Hélène Cixous so beautifully noted, Medusa is laughing and beautiful. Her laughter is a declaration of survival and an echo of relief. For the sake of a violent society, we must cease expecting survivors to stay frail. Do not demand our gentleness when the world is still full of predators. Do not ask us to be compliant, and don't call us pretty. Call us Medusa.
